This chapter investigates formal pairings of modern and ‘primitive’ art in Der Blaue Reiter almanac (1912) and the Folkwang Museum in Hagen. Designed in 1902 by Henry van de Velde for Karl Ernst Osthaus, the Folkwang was the first museum of modern art and also the first institution to display so-called primitive objects as art. Influenced by the writings of Julius Meier-Graefe, Osthaus installed art objects in ahistorical and strikingly visual displays grounded in the theory and practice of the Gesamtkunstwerk (‘total work of art’). Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc and August Macke adopted some of the Folkwang’s display strategies in Der Blaue Reiter almanac, which featured pairings of modern and ‘primitive’ art alongside musical compositions, poems and a theatre script. However, a close analysis of the almanac’s illustration programme reveals inconsistent understandings of the ‘total work of art’ and its relationship to the primitive. Exploring the points of overlap as well as difference between the Folkwang Museum and Der Blaue Reiter almanac underlines the significance of the Gesamtkunstwerk to European primitivism around 1900.

This chapter examines the changing priorities of German gallerists, art critics and historians, concerning the significance of the first two manifestations of artistic expressionism, namely Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter circles, shifting alliances that would partly lead to their polarization in various monographs on the movement. The significance of art historian Lothar Buchheim, who attempted to define the distinctive character of these expressionist formations, while effectively contributing to this ‘polarization’ is discussed. In addition to considering issues of ‘reception’ from the inception of these avant-gardes through to post-1945 surveys when the phenomenon of expressionism was more closely investigated, this chapter reassesses the web of associations between these Berlin and Munich-based artists, connections and collaborations that have only been mentioned rather than fully discussed in the literature to date. A key aspect of this chapter is an analysis of the ties that link the self-styled leader of Die Brücke, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, with the driving force of Der Blaue Reiter, Wassily Kandinsky, as well as the critical importance of Franz Marc, who was the mediator between both circles. The author also considers the relationship of Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter in light of the aesthetics of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche.

This chapter wagers that situating Walter Benjamin's early writings on language in conversation with Wassily Kandinsky’s in Der Blaue Reiter and Concerning the Spiritual in Art may elucidate Benjamin's hermetic and fragmentary texts. It therefore constructs a dialogue between Kandinsky's writings, which Benjamin read and admired, and Benjamin's rethinking of the relation between language and perception in the late 1910s and early 1920s. It argues that Benjamin's philosophy of language may draw on procedures Kandinsky proposed for defamiliarizing words – for perceiving them as if they were incomprehensible, divorcing them from what Kandinsky calls their ‘practical-instrumental meaning’. Kandinsky speaks of two methods for this: saying a word repeatedly and viewing the form of a letter as a ‘thing’, an arrangement of lines. However, whereas Kandinsky argues for the expressive power of the visual shape of written language, seeing it as something like a living human body communicating emotion through its gestures, Benjamin sees what he calls the word's ‘skeleton’ as expressionless in the extreme. Benjamin both takes on Kandinsky's ideas and turns them upside down: like Kandinsky, Benjamin too imagines the graphic shapes of letters as anthropomorphic, but does so in order to emphasize their deathly expressionlessness.

This chapter takes as its starting point Die Tunisreise, a 2007 film about Paul Klee’s journey to Tunisia in 1914, by the Swiss filmmaker Bruno Moll and Tunisian filmmaker and artist Nacer Khemir. In the film, Khemir retraces the Tunisian journey and reflects on the significance of the Swiss modernist’s appropriation of Tunisian visual culture for his own wide-ranging artistic practice. Whereas Klee’s Tunisian watercolours and related works have often been understood within the framework of Orientalism, McGavran draws upon post-colonial theory to argue that the primitivism of Der Blaue Reiter underpins Khemir’s appreciation for Klee and to elaborate upon cultural exchange between Europe and its former colonies over time.

This chapter argues for an extension of our historical view of Dada to include the vital influence of Munich and Der Blaue Reiter. It focuses on Hugo Ball, founder of Dada, and on his changing engagement with the theatre, with modern art and with the figure of the artist, first in Munich and then in Zurich. The chapter explores how, for Ball, Kandinsky was both the consummate artist and, eventually, a tangential cause of Ball’s disillusionment with and departure from the artistic avant-garde. The chapter brings to light some key primary sources relating to Ball’s ideas for what would become the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich. As a whole, it makes a case for a more nuanced account of the relationship between Expressionism and Dada, and between the avant-gardes of Munich and Zurich, before and during World War I.

This chapter lays out the purpose and contents of the volume. It begins by sketching the origins of Der Blaue Reiter, which was formed in 1911 by Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc and Gabriele Münter after Kandinsky’s Composition V was rejected by the New Artists’ Association of Munich. It then introduces the other chapters, written by a mixture of established and emerging scholars, which examine the legacy of Der Blaue Reiter from a variety of perspectives.

To illuminate Der Blaue Reiter’s relevance for artists of the twenty-first century, this chapter aims to enlarge our understanding of what it means to be ‘political’. By exploring the impact of Russian and German communal anarchists such as Piotr Kropotkin, Vyacheslav Ivanov and Gustav Landauer on the work of Wassily Kandinky – specifically, the tract ‘On the Question of Form’, the drama ‘The Yellow Sound’ and the oil Composition V – displayed in Der Blaue Reiter almanac, this chapter relates Kandinsky’s strategy of using multiple contrasting stimuli of colours and abstracted forms (synthesized from vernacular depictions of folk tales and popular biblical stories such as the Apocalypse) to the anarchist belief in natural law and their hatred of capitalism and materialism. It also points to the anarchist praise of the unconventional (as support for Kandinsky’s interest in Wilhelm Worringer’s discourse on medieval and Gothic art, as well as for his inclusion of contemporary composers in the almanac) as Kandinsky sought to address the problems of spectatorship by transforming the conventional Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk into a powerful, monumental work of art that would stir and involve his audience.

This chapter examines theoretical issues of the avant-garde in Der Blaue Reiter and women artists’ strategies in relation to the male hierarchy of the group. It proposes a revision of binary thinking about the nature of masculine and feminine identity through a study of selected works by Gabriele Münter and Marianne Werefkin. In considering critical reception and the correspondence of the writer, poet and artist Else Lasker-Schüler, the chapter argues that Der Blaue Reiter harboured more complex and performative notions of gendered authorship and agency.

In August 1960, the Arts Council of Great Britain, in conjunction with the Edinburgh Festival and the Tate Gallery, launched a major retrospective exhibition of Der Blaue Reiter artists, the first show of its kind in the UK to collectively introduce the group to the British public. According to the contemporary press, however, the exhibition was a failure when it moved to the Tate in late September. Critics and art historians alike derided the show for being too intellectually-minded, arguing that it spoke only to the erudite few who were already familiar with the Munich-based movement. Building upon the critical literature at mid-century, this chapter proposes a re-evaluation of the 1960 Tate exhibition and its curatorial agenda. Instead of suggesting that the show was inherently flawed because of its programme, it argues that the aesthetically non-unified style of Der Blaue Reiter was, in part, responsible for the show’s non-laudatory praise. As such, this chapter advances a rethinking of Der Blaue Reiter as a cosmopolitan movement that vacillates between historical and artistic significance, and considers how a bias for French modernism may have affected the manner in which the Tate exhibition was received in post-war Great Britain.